Consumer Guide

The Must to Avoid is by a never-complacent new waver laboring to
transcend his own aesthetic parameters. The Pick Hit is by a self-described
knockoff artist who after 10 years of farting around has managed
to repeat himself. There are no rules--only results.

BAD RELIGION:
No Control
(Epitaph)
Like a good rapper, Greg Graffin
always sings his own tune--no matter how the three chords play themselves
out on the (probably nonexistent, but never mind) lead sheet, the
natural drone of his voice adds a music of its own. And he's still
finding naive new truths in disillusioned hardcore truisms. "Culture
was the seed of proliferation but it has gotten melded into an inharmonic
whole" is bad writing; so's "Prescience was not lacking and the
present was not all." Yet propelled by the drone and the three chords,
they clobber you with the life-probe that's always been rock and
roll's secret, excuse, or reason for being.
B PLUS

DAVID BYRNE:
Rei Momo
(Luaka Bop/Sire)
Byrne respects and understands
distance, an essential faculty in world-beat projects, and his increasingly
sinuous singing should make this Latin synthesis a natural. The
lyrics are explicitly social without sacrificing the nervous literacy
of his established voice. He picks good musicians and provides proper
arrangements. And the result is a respectful, highly intelligent
dud. Irritating though the muscular masculinity of sonero tradition
may be, any doubts as to why it's there are dispelled by Byrne's
inability to wrap his weedy chops around salsa that's too tasteful
by half. And I'm beginning to suspect he writes rock lyrics--words
that can only impact loud, grating, and straight-ahead.
C PLUS

COLDCUT:
What's That Noise?
(Tommy Boy/Reprise)
Things work out
all too predictably for this smart young studio duo. Eclectically
danceable and righteously segued though their samples are, they're
too bare-bones in themselves to move the crowd--the world beyond the
dance floor. When a real vocalist climbs aboard--Lisa Stansfield,
Queen Latifah, Junior Reid (though not, righteous eclecticism aside,
Mark E. Smith)--everything is swinging. And when the music is all
beat and concept, it's all beat and concept--though "Party and party
and party and bullshit" is certainly in the great tradition of postmod
self-criticism.
B

THE DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND:
Voodoo
(Columbia)
The cameos--by Dr.
John, Dizzy Gillespie, and Branford Marsalis--are the giveaways,
because this jaunty concept needs those guys, to sing or solo as
the case may be. The headliners are the lounge band of a tourist's
dreams, and that's all they are. Why in the world cover Stevie Wonder's
message-laden "Don't Drive Drunk" as an instrumental (polyphonic,
mais oui)? Because it's a deathless piece of music? To prove how
up-to-date you are? Or to stump the clientele in a game of name-that-tune?
B

DRAMARAMA:
Stuck in Wonderamaland
(Chameleon)
Imagine a Richard
Butler who's not ashamed he watches television--who feels free to
color his dolor with junk detail. That's American guy John Easdale,
and it's too bad that like Butler he's slowing down as he grows
older. The music's lickwise and the writing's fine, but only "Last
Cigarette" is possessed by the runaway verve that drove them before
they hied away to Wonderamaland. I do appreciate the Ian Hunter
cover, though--the good ole '70s.
B PLUS

HALF JAPANESE:
The Band That Would Be King
(50 Skidillion Watts)
Just because Jad Fair is some kind of genius doesn't mean he benefits
from the genius treatment--he needs a real producer forcing him to
develop his material, not Kramer letting 'er rip. Most of these
songlets--27 on vinyl, 30 on CD--go by so fast you don't notice them
end, so that slow ones like "Daytona Beach" and "Deadly Alien Spawn"
stand out. I bet if somebody made him sit down and work out extra
verses, we'd know what the best fast ones were. Suggested pep talk:
"Think funny, Jad."
B MINUS

JON HASSELL/FARAFINA:
Flash of the Spirit
(Capitol/Intuition)
The
idea was for the exoticist to collaborate with flesh-and-blood "traditional
musicians," whatever that can mean in such a context. The result
was to reduce Yurrup and Burkina Faso to a lowest common
denominator--background
music. Worse still, the aural environment neither flashes nor fuses--rather
than a "forced collision of cultures," it sounds like they just
barely missed each other.
B MINUS

KAOMA:
World Beat
(Epic)
I find it impossible to work up the fine
pitch of loathing this piece of product arouses among the right-thinking.
It's only a) hit-plus-filler and b) Europop, lame two ways by definition,
which is no reason to listen to it but also no reason to be dismayed
by its lameness; the lameness of the Brazilian dance-pop it rips
off is more dismaying, because it's more misguided. In a time when
Third World musicians dream of First World rich-and-famous, when Parisian
sensibility deracinates the rhythms of the African diaspora one
day and adds muscle to them the next, when France seeks to regain
world cultural preeminence by embracing an essentially spurious
multiracialism, lambada fits an inevitable market niche. It's Europop
with a café au lait face and a bouncy bottom, and on the hit and
the two cuts that follow it has the vulgar vitality of all great
pop commerce. After that it's filler.
C PLUS

KASSAV':
Majestik Zouk
(Columbia)
What this accomplished display of
pop production values proves is that they're big in France because
they speak French. With keyb hooks and basslines mixed way up, most
of the tracks jump you like the radio. But the pretty-to-gritty voices
have nothing intelligible to say to Anglos--nothing to grab the market
share they have such designs on. And with average track length under
four minutes, the groove ejaculates prematurely almost every time.
B

KONBIT!: BURNING RHYTHMS OF HAITI
(A&M)
Because Caribbean musicians
use horns the way African farmers use cattle--not just as resources,
but as measures of wealth--it took me six months to hear through
the sonic givens on this inspired potpourri. The basic style is
an unsurprising relative of zouk, which saxman Nemours Jean-Baptiste
anticipated by decades in what he called compas (French) or konpa
(Creole, or rather Kreyol). And by insisting on the same kind of
variety and politics that have undone other world-beat compilations,
conceptmaster Jonathan Demme and hands-on producer Fred Paul rescue
theirs from UNESCO disco. Buoyant Jean-Baptiste songs from 1960 and
1957 lead and close, and in between we find not the usual indigenous
hits but three specially commissioned songs, some agitprop, the
Nevilles, and Haitian bands working out of New York, where their
displaced countrymen have enough money to support bootstraps recording.
Some tracks go for the congas, others build a tension that repays
concentration, and it's a tribute to all concerned that you can't
tell the new stuff without a scorecard--though not that the bilingual
lyrics are cassette/CD only.
A MINUS

THE LOUNGE LIZARDS:
Voice of Chunk
(1-800-44CHUNK cassette/CD)
Determined
to become the thinking man's David Sanborn by hook or by crook,
John Lurie swallows his indignation and elects to market himself--your
achieve retail access by dialing the label name on your home telephone.
And dial you might. Finally his tone is as rich as his tunes, his
solos are lifelike, his musicians thrive as individuals and function
as a unit, and his arty moves kick in with a satisfying thwock.
As usual, free jazz meets Henry Mancini meets Kurt Weill meets Peter
Gordon meets the Dew Drop Inn (or is that Le Petit Rendezvous?),
only the pomo patina has worn away--he's lyrical and catchy rather
than "lyrical" and "catchy." Biting and funny he never put quotes
around.
A MINUS
[Later]

NICK LOWE:
Party of One
(Reprise)
The latest old fart to slip into
limbo and come back to play another day, Nick the Knife is a writer
again, every song honed and there for a reason. With the likes of
Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner spiking his wry cool, he yearns for yen,
makes Boeing a modest proposal, spins off pungent epithets ("Refrigerator
White"), nonsense syllables ("Shting-Shtang"), sexual metaphors ("Honeygun").
In a shameless bid for the rockcrit vote, he also finds the perfect
rhyme for "ghastly" (starts with "Rick," lest you already forgot).
And just like with Labour of Lust in 1979, he makes it sound so
easy you expect a reprise a year for the rest of his life.
A
[Later: A-]

L'TRIMM:
Drop That Bottom
(Atlantic)
I know, these girls are a male
fantasy--if Jesse Helms had any idea how sexy-cute they are he'd sneak
them into a kiddie-porn law. The music's a fantasy too--simple rap
beats, simple house hooks. And I get a buzz off 'most every track.
So I'm weak. So sue me.
B PLUS

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS:
Book of Days
(Columbia)
Because this was
unmistakably the P-Furs and unmistakably a stone bore, I figured
we must have overrated this band. No one ever accused them of having
the funk, after all. Comparison with Talk Talk Talk and even Forever
Now soon set me straight, however. Before slipping into chronic
depression, Richard Butler intoned amid chaos--the dissonant drones
that here parade by in formation detonate all over the earlier records,
which makes most of the difference. And although this isn't as lugubrious
as you first fear, speed also matters. Usually folks who quit drinking
stop sounding sorry for themselves afterwards.
C PLUS

STAN RIDGWAY:
Mosquitos
(Geffen)
The voice of the American antihero
deepens--Ridgway invests his tall tales of the end of the line with
lazy, crazy conviction. He thanks Samuel Beckett for "Dogs," rings
James M. Cain for "Peg and Pete and Me," and isn't altogether stupid
about "Newspapers." But it's a lead-pipe cinch that if he says he
can't find "The Last Honest Man," he's a liar.
B

LISA STANSFIELD:
Affection
(Arista)
Like few of her predecessors--Martha
Reeves comes to mind, and also, odd though it may seem,
Teddy Pendergrass--Stansfield's
style is virtually devoid of trademark, display, or melodrama; all
she wants to do with these songs she helped write is sing them.
The songs themselves are as attractive and unassuming as her voice,
a fine instrument that provides more than the expected quota of
aural pleasure without drowning you in its bounty. She loves, she
hurts, she has her limits. She's going to be around.
A MINUS

TINA TURNER:
Foreign Affair
(Capitol)
Crossing Josephine Baker and
Grace Jones in a magisterially self-possessed style of "blackness,"
Tina's a full-fledged superstar in Europe. In the U.S. she's more
like Ray Charles or Tony Bennett--her iconic clout is heaviest when
she's selling products other than her own expertly sultry recordings.
And since chances are Plymouths make her just as hot as romantic
sensuality, maybe this is as it should be.
B MINUS

UB40:
Labour of Love II
(Virgin)
The differences are subtle, like
everything with this band--rather then being dashed, your high hopes
for the sequel succumb to a lingering illness. The beat glides a
little too much, the synth washes a little too much, Ali Campbell
sings the prize covers a little less and runs them through his voice
a little more. And maybe, just maybe, the covers themselves aren't
quite as prize.
B

KATIE WEBSTER:
Two-Fisted Mama!
(Alligator)
Webster's legend has
never connected on record, and by coming down heavy on the soul
standards retro-rocking blues fans yammer for, her much-praised label
debut The Swamp Boogie Queen sold her short. Boogie as in woogie,
not as in bar band, is her gift--a rolling piano style she certainly
didn't invent and just as certainly owns--and here the experts get
it down. The quintessential tough-talking woman with sexual needs
and a heart of gold.
B PLUS